Exclusive details about the game (Patreon)

Hey, everyone! Since I just finished work on the initial release, I don't quite have anything to tease for Chapter 3 just yet. So for now, I figured it'd be a good idea to at least write something for you all!

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When did I start developing Casual Desires?

So, I first started fooling around in Daz Studio in January of this year. I built some rough ideas then, but mostly everything got scratched, including the design of the protagonist. In fact, Rita's design is actually in its third incarnation. I initially had her blonde the first two times, but didn't really like it that much, and eventually found peace with who we have now.

From February to April, I focused mostly on the prologue, and moved pretty slowly since I was new to rendering and still learning things. I redid the prologue several times over, since character designs and everything kept changing. Around the beginning of May is when things finally 'clicked' for me and I thought, yes, I can do this! And so chapters 1 & 2 were smooth sailing from there. It was pretty hectic, especially since I wanted to release the game with two chapters instead of just one. I didn't feel like it would be right to release it to the public without having at least an hour of content first. 

What is my development process like?

First, I make an outline of the chapter. What do I want the characters to do? What location will the scenes take place in? What order should said scenes be in? After I figure all this out, I start writing a rough draft for the entire chapter. Once the rough draft is done, I can start preparing and rendering the images, which is the bulk of my development time. Since iRay rendering takes a massive amount of PC horsepower, a single image can take anywhere between 20 minutes to 4 hours to render, with 1-2 hours being the average. So, I usually have this running while I'm sleeping or working my day job, since it uses up all my computer's juice and makes it hard to do anything else on the computer. 

After I'm done rendering the images, I edit them in Photoshop and pretty them up a little bit. Then once all the renders are edited and ready to go, I start work on my final draft of the script. Are there parts that need more dialogue? Should there be a player choice here? Does everything read smoothly, and are there no typos or awkward bits? If so, then the chapter is pretty much ready for release. 

To put it simply, outline --> rough draft --> rendering --> editing --> final draft

What inspired me to start making visual novels?

I've been a big follower of adult visual novels (both western and Japanese) for a while now. So much so that I actually kept running out of things to play! When you're consuming this sort of media once, sometimes even twice every single day, you eventually start to run out of content to enjoy. Playing the same games over and over... well, it got old, y'know? 

I also found it sorta frustrating how rare female protagonist games are, and how the few that existed would often end up getting abandoned. I feel like there's so much demand for these female protag games... but, strangely, barely anyone was making them. 

So eventually I said, screw it, I'll just make my own! 

What computer specs am I using to render? 

I have a RTX 2060 Super, i7 8700k, and 32 GB of RAM. 

Any personal details to share? Tell us about yourself!

Well, I'm a Canadian dude who turned 27 this year. I actually lived in Japan for about three years (up until 2019), which you could say explains why there's so much mention of Japan in the game, and why I chose to have Rita be half-Japanese. 

Other than that, I'm a pretty big gamer and fan of music in my free time. I also used to be a big follower of anime, but don't really watch it these days. *cry*

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Anyway, that about does it for now. Hope you found it interesting and enjoyed reading. I'll fill you guys in with progress updates and teasers in the coming days and weeks!